As set forth in commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 5,091,972 to Kwon and Kaplan, a method is described wherein a generalized set of statistics is used to operate upon a digital image to remove film grain noise from scanned digital images. Although effective, a problem with this process is that it is not entirely satisfactory in certain situations, since it requires predetermined noise information and it is difficult to use this process to correct for a whole range of digital images taken from different film types. This is a problem because, in fact, photographic film grain statistics vary with brightness levels, film type, and scanner condition.
By comparison, complete film scanner digital processing film writer combinations are available (e.g. the Eastman Kodak Cineon set of components for motion picture film processing) whereby the film type and scanner used to produce digital images are well known at the time of digital processing.